- A
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- Politics makes estranged bedfellows.
-- Goodman Ace
- A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
-- Edward Abbey
- There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
-- Henry Adams
- Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.
-- Woody Allen
- I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick, not wounded, dead.
-- Woody Allen
- Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year and spends very little on office supplies.
--Woody Allen
- Jack Benny played Mendelsson last night. Mendelsson lost.
-- Anonymous
- I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.
-- Sir Edward Appleton
- B
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- People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.
-- Russel Baker
- A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.
-- Alben W. Barkley
- Life is a long lesson in humility.
-- James M. Barrie
- If you suveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you'd find that only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them would know the theme song from the 'Beverly Hillbillies'.
-- Dave Barry
- The word aerobics comes from two Greek words: aero, meaning "ability to," and bics, meaning "withstand tremendous boredom."
-- Dave Barry
- The old system of having a baby was much better than the new system, the old system being characterized by the fact that the man didn't have to watch.
-- Dave Barry
- I've noticed that one thing about parents is that no matter what stage your child is in, the parents who have older children always tell you the next stage is worse.
-- Dave Barry
- It is not necesssary to understand things in order to argue about them.
-- Caron de Beaumarchais
- It is quite untrue that British people don't appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes.
-- Sir Thomas Beecham
- Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.
-- Ingmar Bergman
- The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
-- Ambrose Bierce
- Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
-- Ambrose Bierce
- Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen; soccer is a gentleman's game played by beasts; football is a beastly game played by beasts.
-- Henry Blaha
- One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is.
-- Erma Bombeck
- I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of a hill.
-- Erma Bombeck
- Guidelines for Bureaucrats: 1. When in charge, ponder. 2. When in trouble, delegate. 3. When in doubt, mumble.
-- James H. Borden
- The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if it were.
-- David Brinkley
- The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.
-- Victor Borge
- You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is satire. All you're doing is recording it.
-- Art Buchwald
- Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victems he intends to eat until he eats them.
-- Samuel Butler
- C
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- I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of old ones.
-- John Cage
- When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
--Dom Helder Camara
- Automatic simply means that you can't repair it yourself.
-- Frank Capra
- We're having something a little different this year for Thanksgiving. Instead of a turkey, we're having a swan. You get more stuffing.
-- George Carlin
- An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.
-- Nicholas Chamfort
- You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
-- John Ciardi
- I find it rather easy to protray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.
-- John Cleese
- I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you don't like?
-- Jean Cocteau
- Cookbooks bear the same relation to real books that microwave food bears to your grandmother's.
-- Andrei Codrescu
- Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first call promising.
-- Cyril Connolly
- I don't believe in astrology. The only stars I can blame for my failures are those that walk about the stage.
-- Noel Coward
- The trouble with children is that they are not returnable.
-- Quentin Crisp
- D
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- An appeal is when you ask one court to show it's contempt for another court.
-- Finley Peter Dunne
- Most vegetarians look so much like the food they eat that they can be classified as
cannibals.
-- Finley Peter Dunne
- E
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- Never judge a book by its movie.
-- J.W. Eagan
- History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
-- Abba Eban
- Canada has never been a melting pot; more like a tossed salad.
-- Arnold Edinborough
- F
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- For most men life is a search for the proper manilla envelope in which to get themselves filed.
-- Clifton Fadiman
- Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.
-- William Feather
- You can't find any true closeness in Hollywood, because everybody does the fake closeness so well.
-- Carrie Fisher
- Instant gratification takes too long.
-- Carrie Fisher
- To be stupid, selfish, an have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
-- Gustave Flaubert
- Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
-- Redd Foxx
- Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
-- Milton Friedman
- G
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- I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
-- Gandhi
- The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights.
-- J. Paul Getty
- Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
-- Brendan Gill
- People come to Washington believing it is the center of power. I know I did. It was only much later that I learned that Washington is a steering wheel that's not connected to an engine.
-- Richard Goodwin
- No, Groucho is not my real name. I am breaking it in for a friend.
-- Groucho Marx
- H
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- In Lubbock, we grew up with two main things: God loves you and he's gonna send you to hell, and that sex is bad and dirty and nasty and awful and you should save it for the one you love.
--Butch Hancock
- I like a friend better for having faults that one can talk about.
-- William Hazlitt
- There are more fools in the world than there are people.
-- Heinrich Heine
- Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.
-- Katherine Hepburn
- This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book -- it makes a very poor doorstop.
-- Alfred Hitchcock
- I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the manmade sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.
-- Alfred Hitchcock
- There are several differences between a footballl game and a revolution. For one thing, a football game usually lasts longer and the participants wear uniforms. Also there are more injuries at a football game.
-- Alfred Hitchcock
- Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
-- Alfred Hitchcock
- When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
-- Eric Hoffer
- A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.
-- Elbert Hubbard
- A good listener is usually thinking about something else.
-- Kin Hubbard
- Nothing is as irritating as the fellow who chats pleasantly while he's overcharging you.
-- Kin Hubbard
- The fellow that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you.
-- Kin Hubbard
- One of the simple but genuine pleasures in life is getting up in the morning and hurrying to a mousetrap you set the night before.
-- Kin Hubbard
- Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.
-- Kin Hubbard
- Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
-- Aldous Huxley
- Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
-- Aldous Huxley
- I
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- Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.
-- W. R. Inge
- J
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- Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology.
-- Clive James
- We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.
-- P.D. James
- Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
-- Thomas Jefferson
- K
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- The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.
-- John Maynard Keynes
- The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it's their fault.
-- Henry Kissinger
- Ninty percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad name.
-- Henry Kissinger
- Everyone who ever walked barefoot into his child's room late at night hates Legos.
-- Tony Kornheiser
- An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible.
-- Alfred A. Knopf
- Both the cockroach and the bird could get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.
-- Joseph Wood Krutch
- The trouble with America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.
-- Louis Kronenberger
- L
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- Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast, the disk jockey is not allowed to talk.
-- Fran Lebowitz
- Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.
-- Oscar Levant
- Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, especially if they are worthless.
-- Sinclair Lewis
- People will buy anthing that is 'one to a customer.'
-- Sinclair Lewis
- M
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- Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even
to the protagonists.
-- Norman Mailer
- Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers.
-- Edward Shepherd Mead
- It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has decended from man.
-- H.L. Mencken
- Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant
fact that there are only ten of them.
-- H.L. Mencken
- Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in memory as the wish to forget it.
-- Montaigne
- Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
-- Lewis Mumford
- N
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- The trouble with a kitten is that it eventually beomes a cat.
-- Ogden Nash
- I don't understand the appeal of Spuds McKenzie. He's always surrounded by beautiful women. Now, I'm single, and I know the pickin's can be mighty slim, but you have to be really desperate to date out of your own species.
-- Susan Norfleet
- O
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- Never raise your hand to your children; it leaves your midsection unprotected.
-- Robert Orben
- Cab drivers are living proof that practice does not make perfect.
-- Howard Ogden
- P
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- Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
-- Lester Pearson
- Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
-- Laurence J. Peter
- Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.
-- Laurence J. Peter
- It's strange that men should take up crime when there are so many legal ways to be dishonest.
--Laurence J. Peter
- A financier is a pawnbroker with imagination.
-- Arthur Wing Pinero
- R
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- Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.
-- Dan Rather
- It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.
-- Pierre August Renoir
- There ought to be one day -- just one -- where there is open season on senators.
-- Will Rogers
- When those waiters ask me if I want some fresh ground pepper, I ask if they have any aged pepper.
-- Andy Rooney
- I don't like food that's too carefully arranged; it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I'd buy a painting.
-- Andy Rooney
- No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it facinating.
-- Harold Rosenberg
- If I had a hammer, I'd use it on Peter, Paul, and Mary.
-- Howard Rosenberg
- In Hollywood a marriage is a success if it outlasts milk.
-- Rita Rudner
- Most turkeys taste better the day after; my mother's tasted better the day before.
-- Rita Rudner
- My husband gave me a necklace. It's fake. I requested fake. Maybe I'm paranoid, but in
this day and age, I don't want something around my neck that's worth more than my head.
-- Rita Rudner
- My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can't decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives.
-- Rita Rudner
- I want to have children and I know my time is running out: I want to have them while my parents are still young enough to take care of them.
-- Rita Rudner
- I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy
for the rest of your life.
-- Rita Rudner
- Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity.
That's how rich I want to be.
-- Rita Rudner
- Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there
an also dropped hammer.
-- John Ruskin
- I squirm when I see athletes praying before a game. Don't they realize that if God took
sports seriously he never would have created George Steinbrenner.
-- Mark Russel
- S
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- Acting is like roller skating. Once you know how to do it, it is
neither stimulating nor exciting.
-- George Sanders
- In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian class and the neurotic class.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some
idea of eternity.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.
-- Wilfred Sheed
- There are more bad musicians than there is bad music.
-- Isaac Stern
- Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is
thought necessary.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
- The best reason I can think of for not running for president of the United States is that you have to shave twice a day.
-- Adlai Stevenson
- Some people approach every problem withan open mouth.
-- Adlai Stevenson
- Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork and picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
-- Tom Stoppard
- Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
-- Johnathan Swift
- T
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- Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrasment...They do everything but watch television.
-- Lewis Thomas
- I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance -- a sharp, vindictive glance.
-- James Thurber
- If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
-- James Thurber
- Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.
-- James Thurber
- I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.
-- Lily Tomlin
- The national sport of England is obstacle racing. People fill their rooms with useless
and cumbersome furniture, and spend the rest of their lives trying to dodge it.
-- Herbert Beerbohm Tree
- Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.
-- Pierre Trudeau
- Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain
- Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
-- Mark Twain
- Honesty is the best policy -- when there is money in it.
-- Mark Twain
- I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death
would be unnoticeable.
-- Mark Twain
- Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
-- Mark Twain
- U
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- If you can find something everyone agrees on, it's wrong.
-- Mo Udall
- A healthy adult male bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.
-- John Updike
- If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.
-- Peter Ustinov
- Courage is often lack of insight, wheras cowardice in many cases is based on good information.
--Peter Ustinov
- V
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- Muscles come and go; flab lasts.
-- Bill Vaughan
- An ugly baby is a very nasty object, and the prettiest is frightful when undressed.
-- Queen Victoria
- Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.
-- Gore Vidal
- There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organisation. if there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organised along the lines of the Mafia.
--Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
- W
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- Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you've
got a pretty neck.
-- Eli Wallach
- Nine-tenths of people were created so that you would want to be the other tenth.
--Horace Walpole
- Actions lie louder tha words.
-- Carolyn Wells
- Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it merely had been detected.
-- Oscar Wilde
- The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
-- Oscar Wilde
- It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
-- Oscar Wilde
- When good Americans die they go to Paris. When bad Americans die they go to America.
-- Oscar Wilde
- I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
-- Oscar Wilde
- It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the
commercial classes.
-- Oscar Wilde
- No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
-- Oscar Wilde
- Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
-- Oscar Wilde
- Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
-- Oscar Wilde
- Creative semantics is the key to contemporary government; it consists of talking in strange tongues lest the public learn the inevitable inconveniently early.
-- George Will
- I did a picture in England one winter and it was so cold I almost got married.
-- Shelley Winters
- All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or
fattening.
-- Alexander Wolcott
- There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.
-- Steven Wright
- Y
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- When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of algebra.
--Gene Yasenak
- An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for months or years. A competent attourney can delay one even longer.
-- Evelle J. Younger
- Z
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- The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.
-- Frank Zappa
- It is a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon, 'launder' became a dirty word.
-- William Zinsser
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